You Can Always Go Back Home

It’s hard moving to a town where you know no one but the people that you work with; the people that work for the company that you made a decision to transfer to, twenty years ago. Especially when the town that you leave behind, holds all the people that you grew-up with, went to school with, and learned how to become an adult with.

All those people who knew you as a chubby, snaggle-tooth young girl, then as a teenager who was slowly slimming-up and wore braces, to the high schooler who had finally come into her own skin and was comfortable with most any group she should find herself standing in.

All those people, all those kids/teenagers/now adults, know you better than most anybody. They know your sense of humor, your shortcomings, your failures and your successes. They were with you through skipping classes and getting caught and through figuring out what school was supposed to be about and how to make the most of it.

They were with you through your break-ups and heartbreaks, and cheering you on when you made editor of the high school newspaper and wrote an article that would turn the school on its head and show the adults that “kids” did have something to say, and that sometimes it paid to listen.

They were there when a gang of you went to see Halloween at the movies in 3D and you were too scared to drive home alone afterward.

They were with you when you got your first real job, your first real car, and made your own money while still in high school.

They were with you for summer trips to the beach, getting too much sun, and meeting so many cute boys. Cooking out on camp fires and sleeping in tents on St George Island. And for you people who didn’t know, it really used to be a pretty desolate island. No houses of any kind, no hotels, no food places; just one general store and place for showers. All that ever came there were people to camp, either inside mobile campers or on the beach itself. What a time that was to be a teenager!

All of those things and so much more, I left behind when I moved. All of those people I left behind; my friends who went on with their lives making families, making babies, and working jobs.

By the time you all are reading this, I will have already been back home to have lunch with a few of my girlfriends from home. I try and go home for those lunches a couple times a year, because I miss those people, my friends.  I miss the familiarity, I miss the laughter, and I miss the girls who know me the best.

I miss the folks who can tell by my tone over the phone when something is wrong, and who won’t rest until I open-up about it and they try and help me out.  I miss the girls who loved me first, who love me now, no matter the distance in between, whether it be in miles or minutes of time.